Standardized tests for youngest students trigger debate in Nashville

5:36 PM,
Jun. 29, 2013

Written by

Joey Garrison
The Tennessean

School districts across Tennessee quietly extended a long-utilized standardized test to students as young as kindergarten last year, a move getting a second look in Nashville over its age appropriateness.

The Stanford Achievement Test, or "SAT-10" - a program educators nationally have turned to for decades - arrived in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms at 117 of 137 Tennessee school systems last year. Only second-graders took the test the year before, at the state's expense, but the state paid for all three grades for 2012-13.